Theoretical versus ‘atheoretical’epidemiology

摘要: Epidemiology Unit, CSPO, AO Careggi, Viale Volta 171, 50131 Florence, Italy. the results of a population-based IBD incidence study in a 15-year period (1978–1992) in the metropolitan area of Florence. 2 Because of the geographical and temporal overlapping of the two studies we have reanalysed our data but limited it to the 1989–1992 period in the city of Florence, in order to compare the results. We have a few major comments:1) Overall, Tragnone et al. have identified 126 newly-diagnosed IBDpatients and by a capturerecapture method have estimated a total number of 162 patients, suggesting that they had missed 22% of them (36/162). The two information sources used for this procedure were represented by a hospital flagging system and a list of patients identified by a series of diagnostic procedures (Table 1A). In contrast, according to the re-analysis of our data, in the same period and in the same area we …